Sun Kingdom Golf Club

I traveled to Sun Kingdom Golf Club today, which is actually in a small town about forty minutes outside of Chongqing. As we approached the course I could not believe that a course, much less one considered the best in Chongqing, was located here. We went through a typical Chinese small town with local locals playing mahjong in the streets, sitting around and drinking beer in really small storefronts and guys walking around with no shirts just enjoying the day. We had to ask for directions around five times and a local guy even insisted on coming into the cab with me to show us where the course was.

The course was really nice, it was set right up against some mountains, had some great lakes and ravines that ran through the course and I really liked the bunkering. I got off to a pretty bad start, not so much because of really bad swings, but I was just missing in really bad parts of the course and couldn't follow up one good shot with another. I turned it around on the back, though. I reached the par-five eleventh hole in two and two-putted for a birdie but then bogeyed the next hole, giving it right back. I finished with a 39 on the back though, which I was pretty happy with. Besides the course, another great part of this club was the lady who approached me once on the front and once on the back with a tray of ice-cold green tea. I chugged two glasses of the tea both times, which was really refreshing.

The approach to the first green, a 376-yard par 4

The tee shot on number two, a 386-yard par 4

The approach to number two

Number four, a 162-yard par 3

The approach to number five, a 568-yard par 5

Number seven, a 196-yard par 3

Number nine, a 387-yard par 4

The approach to number nine

Number twelve, a 185-yard par 3

Number fifteen, a 481-yard par 5

My approach to number fifteen

Number 18, a 347-yard par 4

After my round I went into the clubhouse to ask the people to call a taxi for me. They said it would cost 200 yuan, even though the ride was only 30-minutes. I started telling them how ridiculous that price was and that I could get a taxi to drive me around Chongqing for over two hours for 200 yuan, but there was no way to get a cab back to my hotel for less. Finally the staff half-jokingly told me that I could wait around for 45-minutes and take the bus back to Chongqing with all of the staff members. I agreed to that in a second and then went over to the driving range to see if anyone was practicing. There was one person on the driving range - a kid who was maybe ten years old - who was having a lesson with one of the club "pros." I put pro in quotation marks because it did not seem to me that this guy knew any better than the kid what the golf swing was about. He would try to demonstrate to the kid how to hit a golf ball but could not hit it anywhere near high enough and the ball was going all over the place but never where he was aiming. However, the kid was listening to his analysis of the swing, which was pretty basic and looked like the tips in Golf Digest every month.

I then went on the bus and was introduced to a woman who the clubhouse attendant told me would be my "guide." I had no clue why I needed a guide for this bus ride but I figured that she would try to sell me one of the condos that were being built on the course. However, I was wrong, and she was just someone who the clubhouse attendant thought I could talk to on the ride. We started talking about golf in China and America as well as this course in particular, and while she doesn't play golf she had some pretty interesting insights. I asked her why she thought golf was growing in China and she said in addition to the health benefits and that people find the game intriguing, she said she thought people saw golf as a way for China to develop and that by taking up golf they could help their country develop. She was very interested in what golf is like in America, so she started asking me how much a round of golf costs in America, how this course compares to courses in America in price and how many courses there are in America. When I estimated how many courses there are in America she almost had a heart attack and repeated the number to me because she thought she misheard me. I then asked her who plays golf in China, and she started talking about how golf is very expensive, but people will start playing golf and practice for a few years without ever stepping onto a course, which I can not imagine ever doing. She said people go to the driving ranges and practice their swings, hoping that down the road they will have enough money to be able to play 18 holes regularly or even a few times a year. The part of our conversation that I found the most interesting was when I asked her something about the course she worked at in Chinese. I started my question by saying "your course" to identify what I was talking about, but she immediately cut me off, saying, "this is not my course." I'm not sure if she said this because she feels a disconnect with the course she works at since it is too expensive for her to enjoy during her free time, or if it was her way of saying she doesn't own it, but I thought the fact that she didn't let me call it her course was really intriguing.

Dazu Rock Carvings

Today I took a bus to Dazu, 125 kilometers away from Chongqing, to see the rock carvings, which are also a UNESCO Heritage Site. In Dazu county there are over 40 separate sites with thousands of rock carvings, but I went to Bao Ding Shan, the site with probably the best examples of the carvings. People estimate that these carvings took 70 years to complete and were done from 1174 to 1252. It was a bit tough to get to Dazu, I took a bus for around two hours to Dazu county but got off at the wrong stop, so I hopped on a minibus that took me to the right bus station, and then from there took a cab up to the mountain and finally a rickshaw to the entrance. The most famous carving at this hill is a 31-meter long and 5-meter tall reclining Buddha who is depicted entering nirvana. However, there are also amazing carvings which still have their original color that depict hell, heaven, and some of the other gods from Buddhism. It was a pretty amazing site and definitely worth the trip.

Some of the first carvings when you enter the complex

Carvings inside a cave

Nine guardians of Buddhist law. The guardians are supposed to guard the ritual site and subdue monsters.

Buddhist wheel of life (dharma)

Another carving (the other tourists show how impressive these carvings actually are)

Nine dragons bathing the prince (the water was still flowing today)

Reclining Buddha (Sakyamuni) entering nirvana. 37 statues are a part of this carving.

Another view of the reclining Buddha

Some more carvings

My favorite section of carvings (I think this is from the part depicting heaven)

More from the same section (you can see the divider between heaven and hell with the darker figures who are beating people)

Some of the most vivid color on the carvings

A close-up of one of the scens from the "nether world" or hell. There are 18 stories of hell in the carvings, including the "knife mountain" and "knee-chopping" hell. The depiction of hell in these carvings is supposedly the biggest in size and has the most content of any similar scene in Buddhist art.

Chongqing International Golf Club

I took a high-speed train yesterday from Chengdu to Chongqing and decided that the first nice day I had I would play golf, since I've been rained out for over a week. Today was a clear day, and while temperatures were hovering around 100 degrees with lots of humidity (Chongqing is known as one of China's "three furnaces" and walking outside is like walking into a sauna) I went to Chongqing International Golf Club for a round. I've pretty much given up on tee times by now, since the courses at this time of year get so little play I can tee off almost instantly once I arrive at the course. I couldn't see anyone at the course when I arrived and just like that I was on the first tee.

The course is right up against a mountain range, which isn't that hard to find in Sichuan, and the course tries to imitate the mountains, with lots of elevation changes and rolling fairways. I could see that the sprinkler system was on in front of me for the first few holes, and as I stepped onto the greens it was like stepping into puddles. I had no clue why they were keeping the sprinkler system on when the greens already had so much water, and I just assumed they set this schedule without thinking about the condition of the course. So for a few holes in the middle of my front nine it was almost impossible to get a putt to the hole and some of my chips were in casual water, which made me really frustrated. In terms of the condition of the course around the greens, it reminded me of the course I played in Bagan, Burma, where the staff really had no clue what they were doing.

My driving range session in Kunming paid off, as I was hitting my tee shots really solidly and I played pretty well. I went 40-40 for an 80, missing my 6-foot birdie putt on 18 by one rotation for the 79. Since there was literally nobody else on the course (again just like Burma) I played in well under three hours, which was really nice considering the heat today.

The tee shot on number 1, a 417-yard par 4

The first green

The second green, a 389-yard par 4

The tee shot on number 3, a 584-yard par 5

The fifth hole, a 187-yard par 3

The approach to number 7, a 345-yard par 4

The tee shot on number 9, a really short 475-yard par 5. I only had 170 yards left into this green for my second shot, flew the green but got up-and-down for birdie

A side-view of the ninth green

Number 10, a 184-yard par 3. You can start to see the massive floodlights that line the back nine. The back nine is playable at night, which my caddy told me is the preferred time for Chongqing residents to play during the summer (I don't blame them)

The tee shot on number 11, a 413-yard par 4, with lights lining the fairway

The tee shot on number 14, a dogleg left 404-yard par 4 (the best line for a drive is over the trees left of the cart path)

The approach to number 14

The approach to number 18, a 553-yard par 5, with my caddy on the green. I hit a drive in the rough, and then hit a blind shot trying to lay up short of the water but put it in a fairway bunker, then hit a 155-yard shot out of the bunker to six feet...but missed the putt for a 79

I wanted to get a sense of a more typical Chinese course, and I think this is a good example of one. I don't think this course caters to tourists or Westerners, as it was tucked about 45 minutes away from the city center, has relatively modest facilities and not a single staff member spoke English. There definitely seems to be a bit of a lag between how this course is maintained in comparison to all the other courses I've played, but I'll have to play some other local courses to see if it's just this particular course or maybe the region as a whole. My hotel is right next to the Olympic Stadium in Chongqing, which was built to commemorate the 2008 Beijing Olympics, and I noticed there's a driving range right next to the stadium. Hopefully I will make it over there, hit some balls and talk to people before I leave Chongqing.

Dinner with new Chinese friends

I was still feeling lightheaded and a bit sick yesterday, so I decided to eat some plain food and head to a nearby Starbucks for the day to read and relax. About a half an hour after I sat down at Starbucks a Chinese girl asked if she could sit across from me, and started asking me where I was from and what I was doing in Chengdu. I started talking to her about other things and found out she just graduated from college last year and now works at a small company doing intellectual property work. We talked about traveling and she mentioned that she has never been outside of Sichuan Province, but wants to go to Australia and plans to have time to do this when she is 40. However, until then she was talking about how all of her time is spent either studying for a test she's taking in a few months to be able to work at a bank or working. I asked her how she learned English and she mentioned that it was mostly through American movies. I asked her what her favorite movie was and she said, "do you know Nicolas Cage? He's my favorite actor, all of his movies are amazing, I watch them all." Midway through our conversation she got an English text message from a friend which she didn't fully understand so she wrote it on a piece of paper and showed it to me. It said, "if I rest, I will rust." She only knew the literal meaning of "rust" so I explained to her what the figurative meaning of that text was, and she seemed to agree with that text. She invited me to dinner later that night with her roommates and I told her I'd come.

I arrived at her apartment, a small, three-room apartment off an alleyway, and was greeted by her eight roommates. The living room doubled as a bedroom, with two beds flanking the couch, which also doubled as a bed. The other rooms had multiple beds, and the kitchen was out on their balcony. She told me her roommate who was the best chef was making dinner, and he made about nine dishes. I asked her if this was typical, and she said usually they ate about three of these dishes in one sitting, so I think they had gone all-out to welcome me. I had told her at Starbucks that I don't eat meat, so there were a few vegetarian dishes. The dishes that I can remember were: sliced pig's ear, pork with peppers, pork with a special fungus grown in Sichuan, stir-fried potatoes and peppers, tomatoes and eggs, dumplings, spicy tofu, vegetable soup, congee and watermelon.

We started talking in a mixture of Chinese and English, but they started telling me how they were so eager to practice their English, so we started only using English. They even started talking to each other in broken English, which was really funny. One really funny exchange between them was when we were talking about basketball and one of the guys said he was in the hospital for three days after getting a concussion playing basketball, and one of the girls turned to him and said, "I'm so sorry to hear that" in a way that definitely sounded like it was a memorized phrase, and everyone started laughing. For the rest of the night, people randomly would interject, "I'm so sorry to hear that." The same girl who used this phrase exclaimed "Oh my God" almost every five minutes even when someone said something really mundane.

Basketball was a really popular subject, and the guy sitting right next to me asked me if I played and then told me he was a "SG" so I said "oh, shooting guard" which made him really happy. He told me he was a huge Kobe Bryant fan and watches a lot fo NBA games on his computer. When I told the group I went to college in Minnesota, he yelled, "Oh, Timberwolves." They insisted on teaching me some Sichuan slang, and taught me how to say all of the dishes on the table and a few other things in their dialect. I have enough trouble with Mandarin and all of these changes were really confusing to me. They insisted I was a natural, but I had no clue what I was saying and I'm sure it was part of their hospitality. They then taught me a famous ancient Chinese poem about missing home, which they tried to get me to memorize but I failed miserably. The most surprising moment of the night came when one of them asked, "In America, do you have Chinese products?" I tried to hide my surprise, and explained that almost all of the clothes people wear and electronics people use are made in China, which made them all light up and feel a lot of pride about their country.

Throughout the night different roommates kept asking me why I didn't eat meat, and I found out last time I went to Asia it's a lost cause trying to explain the concept of Kosher to people here, so I just told them it was a decision I made, which was genuinely confusing to them. They really could not imagine an average person not eating meat I think. Another recurring theme was talk about how the United States and China are such good friends and they asked me if I had ever met the President. I told them not many people meet the President, and they said, "but I thought he is always traveling around meeting people around the country."

As the night wound down they asked me if I knew any Chinese music, and I told them that the only Chinese song I listen to is "Beijing Huan Ying Ni," which is a song that was produced ahead of the Olympics and we play in Chinese class. We fired up the music video on one of their computers and they all sang it. Four and a half hours after I arrived it was time to leave, we took a few pictures and then I headed back to my hotel for the night.

Our Chef preparing dinner

All of the roommates (except the chef, who went out for the night)

Me with the roommates

I had a tee time for this afternoon at a local course, but it has been raining constantly since last night, so it doesn't look like I'll be able to head out to the course today. Hopefully it clears up and I can get out early tomorrow before my train to Chongqing.

Chengdu and a Chinese Hospital

I got into Chengdu in the early evening and headed out to dinner, going to a typical Sichuanese restaurant (really spicy food). I tried to explain to the waitress that I didn't eat meat so that she could help me find dishes I could eat, and she said "OK, so no meat, but then chicken is fine, right?" (many Chinese people don't consider chicken meat). So I told her I couldn't eat chicken, which made her very confused, and then she recommended seafood, which I told her I also couldn't eat. I finally ordered some fish, which came in a bowl surrounded by a bright red sauce and maybe 100 pepper slices. I tried my best to take out all of the peppers with my chopsticks, but my mouth was still numb for about a half an hour after eating that fish.

The next morning I started out at Wenshu Temple, Chengdu's largest Buddhist temple, which also has a monastery attached to it. The temple was really nice, with lots of walkways, artificial lakes, Monks walking around and even teahouses, which are a Chengdu institution. I then walked down to Tianfu Square, a big people-gathering spot which marks the center of Chengdu. From there I walked to Renmin Park, yet another big people-gathering spot, where families and children spend the afternoons walking around, exercising and drinking tea and the teahouses. I read about an alleyway in Chengdu which is filled with Tibetan stores, so I walked there, and there were probably about 50 stores in a row that all sold the typical Tibetan crafts - brass goods, prayer flags, rugs, paintings, beads and traditional clothes. I've really wanted a Tibetan lampshade, ever since I stayed at a Tibetan hostel last year on my trip that had them all over the place, and only one store sold them. I went in and the lady started at 240 kuai, which is pretty expensive for China, and I got her down to 190, but beyond that she wouldn't budge. I stood there for a while and none of the Chinese tourists were aggressively bargaining, and pretty much paying retail, so I left to go to dinner. After dinner, I walked back to the store and started talking to the owner again. She went down to 185 but wouldn't go lower, so I told her I thought she was giving me an artificially high price since I am a Westerner, and that if I were Chinese I would get a lower price. This seemed to work, and I was able to buy the lamp for 170. This extended bargaining only saved me about $3, but it was a big moral victory.

The next morning I woke up at around 7:00 AM to go to the Giant Panda Breeding Research Base. Pandas are extremely lazy and the only way you can see them awake is if you arrive at around 9:00 AM during feeding (pandas are either eating or sleeping). It was pouring rain, and even though the pandas were supposed to be relatively active they were still mostly asleep. At the base there is a 15-minute movie about Pandas and breeding, which I thought was pretty funny. The movie showed a first-time mother giving birth, and the baby literally flew out of her like a rocket, the mother was so confused and had no clue what this screaming thing was rolling around by her. So the mother started clawing at it and throwing it across the room, until a worker intervened and snatched the baby out of the room. Another really funny thing is that pandas are so fat they can rarely tell if a female panda is pregnant, and sometimes they only know when a baby pops out. Lastly, pandas are so lazy that they will only mate once a year if at all, which is why a lot of the time they have to be artificially inseminated.

Starting that morning, however, my health took a turn for the worse. I started feeling really nauseous and dehydrated and had a huge headache. I returned to my hotel room and felt even worse, as my legs were cramping really badly and I ran up a fever of over 100 degrees. I called International SOS, who referred me to a hospital in Chengdu where they said the doctors spoke English. I went to the emergency room and nobody in the hospital spoke English. I had to continually call SOS to have them act as translators between me and the doctors. There were no private rooms in the ER, just three huge rooms each with maybe about 30 patients. It was not a pretty site, as I had to watch the doctors try to resuscitate a man unsuccessfully, and people get wheeled in with fractured skulls. I tried to just keep my head down and put my hands around my hat so that I had no peripheral vision but when I had to walk someplace else I had to see all of this. Basically the procedure at this hospital was a doctor asks you what's wrong, recommends tests, and then you go to the cashier, pay for all the tests and are given a roll of stickers. You then have to somehow find where you can have each of these tests done, give a sticker to them, then cart your blood or anything else to somewhere else, give them a sticker, then wait for results. Finally, you give a sticker to get your results back and walk your results to any doctor. None of this was explained to me, so I just tried to figure it out as I went along. Whenever I had test results back, I just cornered a doctor, got SOS on the phone and had them explain what it meant to me. It was a pretty chaotic process. My bloodwork was fine, so they thought I got a bacterial infection or food poisoning, so I got some antibiotics, but then a doctor came up to me and said, "I think we will inject you with some medicines." I said, "well, do you know exactly what's wrong with me?" The doctor replied, "no, but injecting the medicines will help." I refused to inject any of these medicines and insisted on returning back to my hotel. Thank God there was nothing more serious wrong with me, otherwise I would have had to fly to Beijing, since there is no way I would have agreed to receive any serious treatment here in Chengdu. I'm also really lucky to have had the International SOS, otherwise there would have been no way to understand anything the doctors were saying to me. This was the first time I have ever gotten this sick abroad, and hopefully it will be my last because getting treated in a hospital like this was not pleasant.

"Business Travel Golf" magazine, at the Lijiang airport

People dancing in the street at night

Wenshu Temple

Another part of Wenshu Temple

The grounds of the Wenshu Temple

The center of Chengdu - marked by a huge statue of The Chairman

A teahouse in Renmin Park

Pandas sleeping

Another panda sleeping

The only active panda I saw - eating bamboo

A red panda